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The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

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The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman CO =CD o If) 5 LD i^/x\.;.:.-:..:x-^.-' _.. o- -<gf ,. -CT) o ==0o ^Hl; "'-v>^''f,J>i,J^t''^k';,*--:\: t C^ > :CD ^^ ::'::' '-' ' CO ";';fw;; '>^r,,- :'^r- VI' vr >• ;,v:.-.:;:;:V^v,.-.'/<,,j-V.'; ;;' :<3t'^ TV * Presented to the LIBRARY of the UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO hy MOFFATT ST. ANDREW WOODSIDE 1970 ^r I Ube Morl^s Classics XL THE WORKS OF LAURENCE STERNE.—L THE UFE AND OPINIONS OF TRISTRAM SHANDY, Gentleman. ) TTbe MorlD's Classics Pott 8vo, leather, gilt, 2j. net. Buckram, paper label, is. 6d. net. Cloth, IS. net. (All volumes, with the exception of Works of Fiction, can be obtained bound in parchment, gilt back, side, top, and silk marker, in case, 2S. 6d. net each. 1. Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. 21. Poe's Tales of Mystery and Seco'ui Impression. Imagination. 2. Lamb's Essays of Ella. Third 22. White's History of Selbome. Impression. 23. De Qulncey's Opium Eater. Tennyson's 3. Poems. 1830-1858. 24. Bacon's Essays. Third Impression. 25. Hazlitt'a Wlnterslow. 4. Goldsmith's Vicar of Wake- 26. Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter. field. Second Impression. 27. Macaulay's Lays of Ancient 5. Hazlltfs Table Talk. Second Rome. Impression. 23. Thackeray's Henry Esmond. 6. Emerson's Essays. Third Im- 29. Scott's Ivanhoe. pression. 30. Emerson's English Trails. 7. Keats' Poems. Second Impres- 31. George Eliot's Mill on the sion. Floss. 8. Dickens' Oliver Twist. 32. Selected English Essays. 9. The Ingoldsby Legends. Second Chosen and arranged by W. Impression. Peacock. Hume's Essays. Emily Bronte's Wutherlng 33. Heights. 34. Bums' Poems. Darwin's Origin of Species. 35. Gibbon's Roman Empire. Vol. Second Impression. I. of Homer. Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. 36. Pope's Odyssey Dryden's VlrgU. English Songs and BaUads. 37. Compiled by T. W. H. Cros- 38. Dickens' Tale of Two Cities. LAND. Second Impression. 39. Longfellow's Poems. Vol. I. Charlotte Bronte's Shirley. 40. Sterne's Tristram Shandy. EazUtt's Sketches and Essays. SI. Buckle's History of ClvUiza- tlon. Vol. I. Second Impression. 1 Herrick's Poems. I 42. Chaucer's Works. VoL 1. From the text of Prof. Skhat. Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. I (By permission of the Oxford I Pope's Iliad of Homer. University Press.) I 43. The Prince. By Niccol6 Ma- Carlyle's Sartor Resartos. Translated I CHiAVELLi. into Swifts Gulliver's Travels. English by LuiGl Ricci. I THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF TRISTRAM SHANDY GENTLEMAN BY LAURENCE STERNE LONDON GRANT RICHARDS 48 LEICESTER SQUARE 1903 ' ' The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy was first published in nine volumes between 1759 and 1767. In 'The World's Classics' it was first published in one volume in 1903. Printed h R. & R. Clark Limited, Edinburg CONTENTS The Lit'E and Opinions of TRisxRAai Shandy : Book 1. 5 Book II. 74 Book III. 142 Book IV. 220 Book y. 313 Book VI. 374 Book VII. 435 I Book VIII. 492 Book IX. 549 THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF TRISTRAM SHANDY I GENTLEMAN Tapaffffei. toi)s 'AvdpJnrovs ov to. Upiy/JLara, ^ 'AXXi TO, irepl tQiv Upa.yiia.Tuv Aoyfiara. To the Right Honourable Mr. PITT Sir, Never poor Wight of a Dedicator had less hopes from his Dedicatiou, than I have from this of mine ; for it is written in a bye corner of the kingdom, and in a retired thatched house, where I live in a constant endeavour to fence against the infirmities of ill health, and other evils of life, by mirth ; being firmly per- suaded that every time a man smiles, but much more so, when he laughs, it adds something to this Fragment of Life. I humbly beg, sir, that you will honour this book, by taking it (not under your Protection it must protect itself, but) into the country with it you ; where, if I am ever told, has made you smile ; or can conceive it has beguiled you of one moment's pain 1 shall think myself as happy as a minister of state ; perhaps much happier than any one (one only excepted) that I have read or heard of. / nm, great sir, (and wiHit is more to your Honour) I am, good sir. Your Well-wisher, and most humble Fellow-subject, THE AUTHOR. —I THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF TRISTRAM SHANDY, Gent. BOOK I CHAPTER I I WISH either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me ; had they duly considered how much depended upon what they were then doing ;—that not only the production of a rational Being was concerned in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind ; —and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take their turn from the humours and dispositions which were then unpermost ; Had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly,—— am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world, from that in which the reader is likely to see me. —Believe me, good folks, this is not so inconsiderable a thing as many of you may think it ; —you have all, I dare say, heard of the animal spirits, as how they are transfused from father to sou etc. etc. —and a great deal to that purpose : Well, you may take my word, that nine parts in ten of a man's sense or his nonsense, his successes and — 6 THE LIFE AND OPINIONS miscarriajj^es iu this world depend upon their motions and activity, and the different tracts and trains you put them into, so that when they are once set a-going, whether right or wrong, 'tis not a halfpenny matter, away they go cluttering like hey-go mad ; and by treading the same steps over and over again, they presently make a road of it, as plain and as smooth as a garden-walk, which, when they are once used to, the Devil liimself sometimes shall not be able to drive them off it. 'Pray, my Dear,' quoth my mother, 'have you not !' forgot to wind up the clock ?'^ 'Good G— cried my father, making an exclamation, but taking care to moderate his voice at the same time, ' Did ever woman, since the creation of the world, interrupt ? a man with such a silly question ' Pray, what was your father saying ? Nothing. CHAPTER II Then, positively, there is nothing in the question that I can see, either good or bad. Then, let me tell you. Sir, it was a very unseasonable question at least, —because it scattered and dispersed the animal spirits, whose business it was to have escorted and gone hand in hand with the Ho.muncui.us, and con- ducted him safe to the place destined for his reception. The Homunculus, Sir, in however low and ludicrous a light he may appear, in this age of levity, to the eye of folly or prejudice ; —to the eye of reason in scien- tific research, he stands confessed —a Being guarded and circumscribed with rights. The minutest philo- sophers, who, by the bye, have the most enlarged understandings, (their souls being inversely as their enquiries) shew us incontestably, that the Homunculus is created by the same hand, —engendered in the same course of nature, —endowed with the same locomotive powers and faculties with us : —That he consists as we — OF TRISTRAM SHANDY 7 do, of skin, hair, fat, flesh, veins, arteries, ligaments, nerves, cartilages, bones, marrow, brains, glands, geni- tals, humours, and articulations; — is a Being of as much activity, — and, in all senses of the word, as much and as truly our fellow -creatuie as my Lord Chancellor of England. —He may be benefited, —he may be injured, —he may obtain redress ; —in a word, he has all the claims and rights of humanity, which Tully, Puffendorf, or the best ethic writers allow to arise out of that state and relation. Now, dear Sir, what if any accident had befallen him in his way alone ! —or that, through terror of it,, natural to so young a traveller, my little Gentleman had got to his journey's end miserably spent ; —his muscular strength and virility worn down to a thread ; —his own animal spirits ruffled beyond description, and that in this sad disordered state of nerves, he had lain down a prey to sudden starts, or a series of melancholy dreams and fancies, for nine long, long months together. — I tremble to think what a founda- tion had been laid for a thousand weaknesses both of body and mind, which no skill of the physician or the philosopher could ever afterwards have set thoroughly to rights. CHAPTER m To my uncle Mr. Toby Shandy do I stand indebted for the preceding anecdote, to whom my father, who was an excellent natural philosopher, and much given to close reasoning upon the smallest matters, had oft, and heavily complained of the injury ; but once more particularly, as my uncle Toby well remembered, upon his observing a most unaccountable obliquity, (as he called it) in my manner of setting up my top, and justifying the principles upon which I had done it, the old gentleman shook his head, and in a tone more expressive by half of sorrow than reproach, —he said his heart all along foreboded, and he saw it verified in — 8 THE LIFE AND OPINIONS this, and from a thousand other observations he had made upon me, That I should neither think nor act — ! like any other man's child : ' But alas ' continued he, shakina: his head a second time, and wiping away a tear whicli was trickling down his cheeks, ' My Tristram's misfortunes began nine mouths before ever he came into the world.' —My mother, who was sitting by, looked up, —but she knew no more than her backside what my father meant,—but my uncle, Mr.
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